Infants and other incontinent individuals wear absorbent articles such as diapers to receive and contain urine and other body exudates. Absorbent articles function both to contain the discharged materials and to isolate these materials from the body of the wearer and from the wearer's garments and bed clothing. Disposable absorbent articles having many different basic designs are known to the art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. Re. 26,152, entitled "Disposable Diaper" issued to Duncan and Baker on Jan. 31, 1967, describes a disposable diaper which has achieved wide acceptance and commercial success. U.S. Pat. No. 3,860,003, entitled "Contractable Side Portions For Disposable Diaper", issued to Buell on Jan. 14, 1975, describes an elasticized leg cuff disposable diaper which has achieved wide acceptance and commercial success.
However, absorbent articles have a tendency to sag or gap away from and to slide/slip down on the body of the wearer during wear. This sagging/gapping and sliding/slipping is caused by the relative motions of the wearer as the wearer breathes, moves and changes positions, by the downward forces generated when the absorbent article is loaded with body exudates, and by the rib-like element of the materials of the absorbent article itself when subjected to such wearer's motions. This sagging/gapping and sliding/slipping of the absorbent article can lead to premature leakage and poor fit of the absorbent article about the wearer in the waist regions and the leg regions of the absorbent article.
In order to more snugly fit absorbent articles about the wearer, certain commercially available absorbent articles have been provided with elastic features. An example of a disposable diaper with elastic side panels is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,151,092, entitled "Absorbent Article With Dynamic Elastic Waist Feature Having Predisposed Flexural Hinge" issued to Buell, Clear, and Falcone on Sep. 22, 1992. However, elastics are costly and require a certain degree of manipulation and handling during assembly. Further, while elastics do provide a degree of stretch for the absorbent article, the components of the absorbent article to which the elastics are attached are typically not elastic such that the elastics must be prestretched prior to being secured to the absorbent article or the inelastic components must be subjected to mechanical stretching (e.g., ring rolling) to enable the added elastic to be effective. Otherwise, the added elastic is restrained by the inelastic components.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a relatively low cost, easy to manufacture, absorbent article having sustained dynamic fit about the wearer during use.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an absorbent article having a unique extensible waist feature, preferably without the use of elastic, that provides sustained dynamic fit and improved resistance to leakage during use due to the conformability of the materials forming the waist feature by virtue of their readily extensible nature.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide an extensible waist feature on an absorbent article that exhibits an "elastic-like" behavior in the direction of applied force or elongation without the use of additional elastic material.
It is an even further object of the present invention to provide an extensible back waist feature on an absorbent article that enhances fit and containment by providing multiple zones or panels having different force/extension properties to better distribute the forces encountered by the back waist feature during use and provide the necessary stretch and extension characteristics in those zones.
These and other objects of the present invention will be more readily apparent when considered in reference to the following description and when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.